Eric gets it right.

Eric Sink is one smart mother.  With all of the complaining, bitching, and moaning about not getting Team System for free, Eric is the first person I saw that pointed out that you really don’t get anything for “free” with MSDN.  All that software you get is so you can develop against it, not that you can use it how please because you happen to be a developer.  Let me explain:

MSDN gives you software and the right to use that software when you are developing applications that interoperate with the software from MSDN (Holy Recursiveness Batman!).  Make sense?  MSDN does not give you rights to use Office, if you aren’t using Office in your application.  I can see why this is confusing, so let me try explaining with a really, really bad analogy:

You build cabinets.  I build houses.  I depend on you to build quality cabinets so people will buy my houses, so I give you a “Development House”.  You can go in to this house and put up cabinets, take them down, figure out the best way to install them, and so on.  Since I gave you the house so you can test install cabinets in it, I would be mightily pissed if you moved your family in.

Get it?  (I told you it was bad (I’m really sorry you had to sit through it)).  Eric does a better job of explaining that then I do, so go read his post.

Eric also brings up the issue of tiers, and how MS is pricing Team System for the “Team” tier to go after the people they lose to Rational/IBM.  That still leaves the question as to why they left the “Professional” tier alone.  I think that answer is pretty apparent:Microsoft can’t compete at the 5 - 100 developer level. Think about it for a second.  With tools like TestDriven.NET, SubVersion, CruiseControl.NET, and the large amount of free/inexpensive quality defect tracking out there they can’t compete.  Wherever they price themselves, they price themselves out of the market.

I completely understand where everybody is coming from. “Team System is the new hotness and gosh darn it I want it.”  I want it too!  Team System gives me “Shiny Thing Syndrome”.  It’s cool, it’s slick, it’s all that and a bag of chips. (I should be a Team System cheerleader).  But you know, I also want a Lamborghini and I’m sure a whole bunch of you wouldn’t mind one either.  The thing is, it isn’t in my price range.  Neither is Team System.  I don’t think I will be getting either any time soon.